Insights Into Lyme Disease Treatment

Further complicating matters is the fact that tests for diagnosing Lyme disease are inaccurate and inadequate, for many reasons. For instance, Lyme disease suppresses the body’s antibody production, resulting in false negative antibody tests, while antigen tests miss blood samples containing proteins from borrelia burgdorferi, one of the principal organisms implicated in most US cases of Lyme. What’s more, due to medical politics, most doctors aren’t taught about chronic Lyme disease, and so don’t know how to recognize or treat it.
 
However, numerous case studies prove that chronic Lyme exists, and can often be effectively treated with long-term courses of multiple antibiotics and herbal remedies. Wise doctors, scientists and other Lyme advocates have presented these case studies to the IDSA and US Congress, yet time and again, the studies have been dismissed. This has prevented doctors and the public from learning the truth about chronic Lyme disease, and policy and funding for research and treatments from being developed.
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Because of this, there are hundreds of thousands, perhaps even millions, of undiagnosed and/or improperly treated cases of Lyme disease. Doctors who are aware of the devastating effects of chronic Lyme disease and who know how to treat it are often persecuted by the medical establishment. Many are taken to court and their licenses revoked for treating and healing people with long-term courses of antibiotics and other remedies. More information on the politics of Lyme disease are revealed in the award-winning 2009 documentary, Under Our Skin: The Untold Story of Lyme Disease, and in Pamela Weintraub’s book, Cure Unknown.
 
Chronic Lyme is a debilitating, disabling disease that affects every organ and system of the body. It mimics a variety of diseases, such as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Fibromyalgia, Rheumatoid arthritis and Lupus, and in the most severe cases, Multiple Sclerosis, Parkinson’s or ALS. The International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society (ILADS), which recognizes the existence of chronic Lyme and establishes accurate guidelines for its treatment, estimates that most chronic Lyme disease sufferers experience a level of disability equivalent to that of a person who has suffered from a recent heart attack. As chronicled in Under Our Skin, those with chronic Lyme experience so much neurological and cognitive dysfunction that they often end up losing their jobs, homes, mobility, and, in some cases, their lives.
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Effective treatment protocols are incredibly complicated and involve many months to years of multiple antibiotics and antimicrobial herbs, both intravenous and oral, along with treatments to heal the myriad of systemic bodily dysfunctions caused by the disease. Not only that, but they also involve doing detoxification therapies to remove the toxins that are generated by the multiple types of tick-borne organisms involved in chronic Lyme. Indeed, borrelia burgdorferi isn’t the only organism implicated in the disease. The malarial-like parasite, babesia, along with bartonella, ehrlichia and many others, comprise the matrix of infections that is chronic Lyme disease and which has disabled many hundreds of thousands of people in the United States and abroad.
 
One Lyme disease survivor, Connie Strasheim, also a medical researcher and writer, realized, after failed attempts to obtain reliable and effective treatments for her illness, that there was a paucity of truthful information on Lyme disease and a shortage of doctors who knew how to treat it. She began to research doctors until she found a handful that she believed were competent and experienced in treating it, and after extensively interviewing them, published their treatment protocols in what is now the best-selling Lyme disease treatment book on the market: Insights into Lyme Disease Treatment: 13 Lyme-Literate Health Care Practitioners Share Their Healing Strategies.
 
Ms. Strasheim says she wrote the book because, “Chronic Lyme disease diagnosis and treatment are incredibly complicated and I wanted to have a resource, not only for myself, but for others, which would describe what an effective Lyme disease protocol looks like. This resource would be written from the perspective of doctors who were having success at treating their chronically-ill Lyme patients. I wanted to shorten the treatment runway for those who might otherwise spend years searching for adequate treatment, as I did.”
 
Insights into Lyme Disease Treatment is written from the perspective of eight Lyme-literate medical doctors (MD’s), two naturopathic doctors (ND’s), a “heilpraktiker” (or healing practitioner, as the German title translates into English) and one chiropractor and nutritionist. The training and education of the experts encompasses a broad range of disciplines, but most use a combination of allopathic, naturopathic, complementary and alternative medicine in their practices. Whatever their background, however, all are experienced in treating chronic Lyme disease.
 
For those who have been recently diagnosed with Lyme disease or who haven’t received adequate treatment help through the means that have been available to them, Insights Into Lyme Disease Treatment provides a comprehensive variety of effective, in-depth solutions. For the practitioner, it provides cutting-edge information on how to treat Lyme disease which cannot be found elsewhere.
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After interviewing the thirteen doctors represented in Insights into Lyme Disease Treatment, Ms. Strasheim wrote the book’s chapters, collaborating with the doctors in the editing process, to make sure that all of the information from the interviews was accurately represented. Each chapter is devoted to the treatment approach of a particular practitioner, and covers, to a greater or lesser degree, the following:
 
1.)    Anti-microbial treatments for Lyme disease and associated infections, including antibiotics, herbs, homeopathic remedies, plant stem cells and biophotons.
2.)    Information on how to support the body’s systems, which is an integral component to healing from chronic Lyme disease. Particular attention is given to the immune, endocrine, neurological, digestive and musculoskeletal systems.
3.)    Treatments for symptomatic relief. Solutions for fatigue, pain, brain fog, depression, anxiety and insomnia are    offered, as well as others.
4.)    Detoxifying Lyme biotoxins, mold, candida, heavy metals and other environmental toxins.
5.)    Treating food and environmental allergies.
6.)    Lifestyle and dietary recommendations for faster healing.
7.)    Strategies for healing emotional trauma.
8.)    Patient and practitioner challenges to healing.
9.)    Factors that influence healing.
10.)  Suggestions for how family and friends can help the sick.
11.)  Which anti-microbial treatments work and which don’t.
12.) How to discern whether Lyme disease is primary in patients’ overall symptom picture.
 
Insights into Lyme Disease Treatment allows readers to compare and contrast different effective Lyme disease protocols, and provides a comprehensive look at treatment options from those who are having success at treating others from this devastating disease. Because of this book, thousands of Lyme disease sufferers are finding help and healing from an insidious illness that, without proper treatment, would otherwise disable them.
 

The Author
Connie Strasheim is a medical researcher and writer, and the author of four books on holistic treatments for Lyme disease, cancer and chronic illness. Her second Lyme disease book, Insights Into Lyme Disease Treatment: 13 Lyme-Literate Health Care Practitioners Share Their Healing Strategies, has been the bestselling Lyme disease treatment book since its release in September, 2009. In addition to writing books on holistic medicine, Ms. Strasheim maintains a blog on chronic illness and Lyme disease: www.lymebytes.blogspot.com . She also leads a bi-monthly prayer conference call for the chronically ill around the United States. A survivor of chronic Lyme disease, Ms. Strasheim’s near-decade long battle with illness, along with her research and interviews with dozens of doctors, have provided her with valuable insights into healing the body, mind, soul and spirit.